Nora Lessersohn

Long before there was a substantial Middle Eastern community in the United States, Khachadur “Christopher” Oscanyan (1818–1895), an Armenian-American from Istanbul, worked tirelessly to cultivate good relations between America and the Ottoman Empire. A writer, lecturer, entrepreneur, and diplomat, Oscanyan used a range of media not only to try to “correct erroneous impressions” of the “Turks,” but also to cultivate what we would today call “intercultural understanding” and, through it, a strong American investment in the Ottoman Empire.

My dissertation is a transnational cultural biography of Christopher Oscanyan and the ways in which he leveraged a range of American visual media and national affiliations to encourage and promote imperial reform in the Ottoman Empire. In what ways did an American audience understand and view Oscanyan and his imagery: his photographs, tableaux vivants, object displays, illustrated writings, and personal costume? To put it another way, how did Oscanyan and his images fit into an American visual landscape, particularly during the antebellum and Civil War years, when he was most active? Additionally, what does Oscanyan’s transnational career tell us about the practice of national affiliation among non-state communities in the mid-nineteenth century? How do Oscanyan’s acts of affiliation relate to his pursuit of visibility and legibility?

Drawing from scholarship across fields, from American and Ottoman history to Museum and Cultural Studies, I analyze Oscanyan’s unique contributions to American lecturing, photography, newspaper writing, publishing, and performance culture. I also consider the extent to which the failure of Ottomans like Oscanyan to establish an imperial federation reveals the rising power of a totalizing nation-state model that increasingly obscures Oscanyan’s complexities and renders impossible his vision for the future of Ottoman-American relations.